Abstract
Sleep-related deaths are a common preventable cause of death, and such deaths occur disproportionately in families of color. Home visitors provide families with education about infant safe sleep guidelines; however, families face many barriers to engaging in safe sleep practices. This study evaluated the efficacy of a program to train home visitors to talk to clients about infant safe sleep using Motivational Interviewing and cultural sensitivity. We examined the effects of the intervention on home visitors’ (n = 23) knowledge, MI skill use, and cultural sensitivity using a single group pre-post design. We also examined home visiting clients’ (n = 78) knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors using a quasi-experimental design. Home visitors were primarily female (97%), had a college degree (86%), and were primarily white (50%) or African American (43%). The home visiting clients were all female and were primarily African American (43%) and Caucasian (36%). Most clients (59%) earned less than 30,000 dollars per year. Home visitors showed significant improvement in MI skill use and cultural sensitivity from pre- to post-test. Regarding client outcomes, our results indicate a significant group by time interaction when predicting changes in client knowledge such that the treatment group showed larger gains than the control group. There were no significant differences between groups when predicting changes in client attitudes or behavior. MI may be an effective technique for home visitors to help increase families’ safe sleep knowledge. Additional research is needed to examine whether such training can translate to changes in families’ safe sleep behavior.
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Funding
This work was supported by the United Way of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo Region (P.I. Cheryl Dickson, M.D., MPH).
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Summer Chahin, Amy Damashek, Fernando Ospina, and Cheryl Dickson declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent
All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study. All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.
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Chahin, S., Damashek, A., Ospina, F. et al. Evaluation of a Safe Sleep Training for Home Visitors and Their Clients. J Clin Psychol Med Settings 29, 477–488 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10880-021-09811-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10880-021-09811-2
Keywords
- Infant mortality
- Infant safe sleep
- Home visiting services
- Motivational interviewing